The growing Struggle to practice Chinese when your appearance says English

After a few years of studying Mandarin in Melbourne, Australia, I was finally aboard a flight to Beijing.

It was the late 1990s, a time when few Beijingers spoke English. Away from expatriate temptation, the opportunities to apply my language studies were vast as part of a deep intercultural journey.

But the Beijing of 2014 is an increasingly globalized hub for people from other parts of China as well as for international visitors and, sadly, no longer is a Chinese-language-learning paradise, especially for those whose appearance, to Chinese people, screams English.

As a Chinese-language learner, I long for the 1990s, an era when a foreign Chinese-language student could open their attempt to establish contact in Chinese with something like this (in Chinese): "Hello, my Chinese name is (Jiang Shilun). I am (Australian), and I am happy to meet you."

The standard reply in Chinese went something like this: "(Australia) is a beautiful country. Your Chinese is very good. How long have you lived in Beijing?" Inevitably this would lead to further conversation, perhaps even a mutual Chinese-language-based friendship.

But in the Beijing of 2014, a linguistic battle is underway. Alongside China's own rise is the seemingly unstoppable second-language wave among 20- and 30-something Chinese who started learning English in primary school.

In turn, that same opening sentence in Chinese from the 1990s is now likely to generate a dismissive response in English: "Hello, your Chinese very good. Where are you from?" A determined response in Chinese, fluent or otherwise, by a noticeably foreign person is in turn almost an act of intercultural language-learning war.

In the ensuing battle, native Chinese listeners are typically quicker than presumed English speakers to "not understand" what the other speaker has said. This also may depend on the extent to which they are less familiar with non-native versions of their language.

In the same vein, when speaking Chinese with foreigners, they seldom slow down or speak more clearly - either wantonly or unintentionally undermining the chance for diplomacy in the underlying battle of the second language.

As public campaigns accelerate the world over for non-Chinese students to learn Chinese, could it be that the chance for foreigners to use Chinese with native Chinese speakers under the age of 40 could in fact be diminishing? Credit the success of English teaching and learning in China over recent decades. It is also true that only a very small percentage of foreigners passing through or living in China actually do speak Chinese. For most visitors, the emerging prevalence of English can't come fast enough. But what about the rising number of foreign skirmishers on the front lines of both second languages and the global economy in Beijing and beyond?

Over some seven years in Beijing, I have adjusted to the battle of the second language using different strategies. In 2007, in my first semester as a doctoral candidate at Peking University, it was obvious early on that my attempts to improve my Chinese skills confronted a tsunami of brilliant and ambitious English-language learners. Forced into near belligerency, I adopted a rule that I would only befriend students who responded to my initial outreach in Chinese in Chinese. This also offered poetic justice in that students who initially spoke with me in Chinese were also those who ended up as the main beneficiaries of my English - to my relief since I avoided the bitter subversion of feeling like a convenient and temporary English language volunteer, rather than a friend.

To this day I'm jealous that my Korean classmates could talk in Chinese with my Chinese classmates without having to return that "favor" in English, and without feeling any sense of imposition.

Whether they spoke fluent English or not, for them, not having the presumed status of English speaker allowed them the freedom to speak Chinese. For me, in contrast, almost every sentence in Chinese felt like a language overdraft that I would one day need to repay in English.

Over the years, in cases where I knew the relationship would be unlikely to be long lasting, I have also opted to describe myself as Russian. It is one of a limited number of nationalities I can adopt convincingly and also hold firm that I really could be a non-English-speaker. That I in fact speak no Russian and know next to nothing about the country has only presented a problem a few times. On one occasion, a caf customer's eyes lit up. "Great. Where do you work?" he asked. My best first response: "An oil company." "Oh, which one, can I have your card? I am in the industry, nice to meet you." "Sorry sir, my stomach is uncomfortable, and I need to run to the ladies. Bye!"

My language frustration has grown with Beijing's internationalization and at times I have contemplated some more extreme guerrilla-type language-learning strategies. One was to have shirts or badges made carrying phrases like, "Last century I taught English. This century please teach me Chinese?" Or, rather more bluntly, "Sorry, I'm not an (your) English teacher." More extreme was the thought of going on China's infamous e-markets to find a mask that would make me look Korean. I imagined that wearing such a mask would open up the same Chinese language opportunities enjoyed by my Korean classmates whose cultural and language adaptability in China I both envied and admired.

Of course, there are views from the other side. A few years ago, I shared my language frustrations with an Indian friend visiting China. He replied with a disheartening story that once at Delhi airport he'd been spoken to in fluent Hindi by an English woman. Finding it too strikingly strange to even be able to reply to her in Hindi, he more naturally spoke in English instead.

So, how can one be part of the Asian Century when you don't look the part, and when the battle of the second language eventually wears you down? Will Chinese always want to speak English with those who look foreign, and especially with native English speakers, or is this a temporary phase? Is it better to battle on the language front today to be better prepared for a Mandarin-speaking day tomorrow?

For most of us non-Koreans, a Korean mask is an impractical option for rapidly learning professional-level Chinese. In turn, it will remain necessary for Chinese learners with an Anglophone appearance to adopt a set of firm but diplomatic ground rules for getting the speaking experience they need. This in itself will add to the depth of their intercultural journey.

The author holds a doctorate in economics from Peking University. She is also co-founder of Sinograduate, which provides Web-based information, analysis and services on China's rapidly advancing knowledge sector. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily European Weekly 07/18/2014 page12)